Organising Media Player on KDL40W605

[glaucodilieto]

Hi everyone,

I am the very happy owner of a shiny KDL40W605 and trying to utilise it to its full potential, which looks positively enormous to someone who has been using a cathode ray TV until a week ago.

I have successfully connected the TV to my home network (quite impressed with myself for that) and I can choose between browsing Music, Photos or Videos, all of which work fine.

The only problem is that (as most people these days I guess) I have thousands of photos and videos on my Windows PC and my TV's media player is trying to show me all of them - on the same screen.

This is obviously no use to me as it takes forever to find what I want and the TV is also really struggling to list everything.

On my PC the photos are obviously organised in folders and I would expect to be able to browse these folders from the TV, or alternatively organise them in some other way on the TV itself.

Is there something I can configure on the PC or the TV to be able to see my folders rather than a random huge list of files?

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi there

This is Sony's way of being extremely helpful and they should be congratulated for this.  This is because if forces one to cull all the media files that you dont really want, in order to have a nice short list of media files to display in some random order.

Seriously now : I have seen this question pop up before, and will get back to you when I know the answer.

By the way, congrats on moving from a CRT TV, its a huge difference isnt it?

Cheers

[glaucodilieto]

Huge difference, night and day really. My 28" Philips CRT TV was actually pretty good, we selected it for its picture quality and 100Hz refresh rate, and actualy one of the reasons we hesitated to move to a flat screen TV was that we were not generally very impressed with the picture clarity of most LCD screens when viewed in the store: motion blur, ghosting and other such problems that affect lower-end LCDs were really putting us off.

I did quite a lot of research before settling for the KDL40W605, based on positive reviews by both users and tech experts.

I don't regret my choice: while standard definition still isn't always as sharp as it was on the Philips (mostly due to the increased screen size I guess), HD is absolutely stunning.

This issue with the media player isn't a big deal really, to be honest I don't know how much I would really use it but I am a bit surprised that Sony haven't put a better system in place. People are used to being able to organise their media in a nested structure on their PC, so the same should be possible on the Bravia.

Thanks for your reply Quinnicus and if you do find a solution I'll be very grateful, if not - no worries. Still love my new Sony!

[Anonymous]

Hey there

In 2011, I also moved from a 28" Bush CRT TV and like you, I did so much research on which brand/model TV that I wanted.  Before I even purchased my TV (then KDL-40NX723) I knew everything about it.  I even do that for the smallest of things (like bedsheets on Amazon!). 

In retail stores it can be hard to judge, as they are not real-world conditions, and generally have the colours more vivid, and test demo loops are animated etc etc.  So one must rely on reviews.

Anyhow, I do have an answer for the organisation of the files in the media player - I asked one of the happy little elves at Sony for information on this, as nothing is mentioned in the iManual (and I dont have access to a 2014 TV).

Unfortunately you cannot display the folders themselves from either USB or DLNA connections on the 2014 TV's media player.  Below is a chart of how the media files are displayed:

The image order seems to be alphabetical by folder. Folders cannot selected individually.  I am also sure that as you scroll through, there would be a repeating pattern too.  So even on the face of it, the "randomness" does have a logical order.

If you goto the options menu you have the possibility to sort content by name or by date (acending or decending).

The only alternative is to rename ALL the media files with a naming convention of "Foldername_Filname_Number.JPG" and then using alphabetical order.  Even with a "bulk renamer tool" this would still be a hassle.

Anyway, hopefully this all makes sense and if you have any futher questions or even just a chat, please dont hesitate to do so

Good Luck with everything

Cheers

[rooobb]

I don't know if something as changed in the 2014 TV lineup, but on my last year W805a accessing to my HDD via DLNA (serviio) I got both the possibility to see the actual folders structure and to have various (and configurable) views to group them by date or genre/actors/last seen/last added (for movies).

By the way I feel more comfortbale to have my HDD connected to the pc(where I can update it) and shared via LAN to my TVs than having it connected directly to the tv, even if I have to have the PC switched on all the time

[Anonymous]

It does seem like it has changed this year Rooob.  Without having access to a 2014 TV, I cant experiment various ways (ie serviio).  However all media is scanned and displayed in one huge list, irrespective of folders - which is a shame, as its a backwards step - especially not having any/many options to change views. 

[glaucodilieto]

Thanks Quinnicus for the very thorough reply!

My TV is indeed a 2014 model yet I don't seem to have the option to view the folder structure as Rooob suggested. I don't know much about DLNA and I haven't heard of Serviio but I will read up on those.

I don't have a separate HDD, I am just accessing the contents of the PC's HDD via LAN.

As things stand at the moment, I doubt I will be using the Media Player feature on the Bravia, which is no big deal as my PC sits right next to it - though watching videos and photos on the bigger screen would have been cool.

Thanks again guys!

[rooobb · Accepted solution]

As Quinnicus said neither me nor him have the possibilities to have a look at a 2014 model, but since now it's clear to me that you are indeed using DLNA (even if you don't know it) it worth make a try with serviio.

If you didn't install anything in your PC and it is a MS Windows 7 or 8 you are sharing the multimedia content via Windows Media Player that in my opionin is very basic. Let's have a look at www.serviio.org and install it: it's quite easy.

Afterword it could be useful for us and the communities if you share the functionalities that will be available in the Sony mediaplayer

[glaucodilieto · Accepted solution]

Well, I installed Serviio on my Windows 7 PC and I must say it seems to do exactly what I was looking for.

Configuration of the shared content from the PC console was very straightforward and the Bravia immediately listed the new media server.

I can browse the media using a variety of parameters but I think I will mostly browse by folders because that's what I do in Windows and I can find things quicker that way.

Initially the media player wouldn't show my WMA audio files at all, even with the Transcoding option selected. Then I saw that the TV's profile on the Serviio console was set to "Generic DLNA Profile". Changing this to "Sony Bravia TV 2013" (there is no 2014 option) seems to have solved the problem.

It seems that not 100% of my video files are showing, even though the library indexing process is complete. It doesn't depend on the format: in the same folder I have two WMV files, one is showing and the other one isn't - though it shows up fine if I use the Media Browser from within Chrome on my PC.

Still, most files are showing and playing very well, so I will definitely be using the TV's media player in future.

Thanks Rooobb and Quinnicus for your help and if you'd like me to test anything and report back, I'll be happy to do that.

[Anonymous]

Brilliant !!

Thank you for confirming that - most appreciated.  At least Serviio can display folders on the TV.

Cheers